I have been reading Elizabeth E. Joh's article "The Paradox of Private Policing" published in The Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology, 2004. Private policing as a topic of study has been ignored by both social scientists and jurists, but its rapid growth has important implications for the future of policing and the gun debate. After all the rise of private policing is an implicit admission that the public police cannot provide adequate levels of protection. Therefore it is not surprising that often its areas of greatest growth are in regions burdened by high crime rates and draconian gun control. Rich
Page 49 "Those who worry about the encroaching powers of the public police in the war against terrorism ignore an equally important group. Increasingly, the private police are considered the first line of defense in the post-September 11th world. Hardly anything is known about the private police, yet they are by far the largest provider of policing services in the United States, at least triple the size of the public police. More importantly the functions, responsibilities, and appearance of the private and public police are increasingly difficult to tell apart. This development has been surprisingly underappreciated. What's more, the law recognizes a nearly absolute distinction between public and private. This means that private police are largely unburdened by the law of constitutional criminal procedure or by state regulation." Footnote 20 on page 54 "Private policing also has a large and sometimes greater, presence in other countries. A recent survey of thirty-seven countries suggests that other countries in the developed world are experiencing a similar expansion in private police forces that rivals or exceeds the numbers of their public police. See Paul Chevigny, Edge of the Knife 157-158, 210, 233 (1995) (describing prevalence and use of private guards in San Paulo, Jamaica, and Mexico City); Jaap De Waard, The Private Security Industry in International Perspective, 7 EUR. J. CRIM. POL'Y & RES. 143, 152-160 (1999). The ratio of private to public police in post apartheid South Africa, for example, is far more dramatic than it is in the United States. See Michael Kempa et al., Reflections on the Evolving Concept of Private Policing, 7 EUR. J. CRIM. POL'Y & RES. 197, 202 (1999) (noting that private policing in South Africa 'outstrips even that of the U.S.').” ________________________________________________________________________ Check out the new AOL. Most comprehensive set of free safety and security tools, free access to millions of high-quality videos from across the web, free AOL Mail and more.
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